14 Purrfectly Precious Pets Who Got Famous On The Mobile App Instagram

From the bonsai kitten hoax of 2000 to the Grumpy Cat craze of yesteryear, and all the Marus and Cheezburger animals and Boos in between, animals have always been bigger on the Internet than humans -- probably because the former doesn't post selfies with transparent humblebrag captions. You know we know what you're up to.

In any case, looking at pictures of cute animals create pleasant feelings in our tummies -- I mean, brains -- and of course pets are a far more convenient source of adorable photos than, say, urban backyard wildlife. Those raccoons ain't posing for nobody!

Now any fame seeker with a decent camera (phone) can try to make his or her pet Internet-famous, and one major platform for this is Instagram. For those who have been abstaining from technology for hipster reasons: Instagram is an application you can install on your phone for free which allows you to take and post photos, apply various frames and effects to them, and then post them online in your own gallery with an ungrammatical hashtag-ridden caption for the world to see. (Hashtags are basically clickable keywords for ordinary 20-somethings to indulge in keyword stuffing like any SEO pro.)

*For a better description of Instagram, see the movie about Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson becoming interns at Google headquarters.

Viral Nova has put together a list of 14 lucky pets who have managed to make it big on Instagram. Curious to note, of the 14 animals featured, eight are dogs and only four are cats. The list maker has clearly not made an effort to remove her bias and reflect the actual ratio of famous Internet cats to dogs and another small mammals. One might even say the list is a tunnel vision study of the obscure, because though the sample size is admittedly small, only the chinchilla is regularly re-posted outside of Instagram -- not exactly "viral" content.

To see the full list and soothe all grumbles, visit Viral Nova by clicking the link below.